Argentine Air Force: Operation TRANSANTAR

FIRST TRICONTINENTAL TRANSANTARCTIC FLIGHT

Operation TRANSANTAR

Carried out between December 4 and 10, 1973 with a Hercules C-130 aircraft, registration TC-66.



It was carried out on an experimental basis, since it was about connecting Buenos Aires with Australia and New Zealand passing through the South Pole, with a stopover at the Marambio Base.



Facing a very near future, which we are already experiencing, the first tricontinental transantarctic flight carried out with a Hercules C-130 aircraft, opened up a new possibility for the country, that the Argentine Republic, now a terminal for so many airlines, abandons its marginal situation. to become an important air communications center.



Our airfields became transit airfields, instead of terminal airfields, meaning that the world now "does not end down there"; Australia, New Zealand and Oceania are our neighbors via Antarctica.

PREPARATIONS AND DEPARTURE

The flight over the South Pole was achieved after careful planning in which all the
experience that the Air Force has on operations in Antarctica.
Long years of flights carried out by navy and aviation planes provided the necessary data so that nothing was left to chance, that terrible factor that the Antarctic eliminates from all its projects.

“Chance is the door through which so many tragedies entered Antarctica,” the brigadier Fautario was able to recall, while commenting on the completion of the transpolar flight.

As soon as the assault on the Pole had been decided, with extreme urgency the solution to three problems was proposed: that of the necessary autonomy to cover the projected route, strictly determining the possible weights with which the plane could operate and the feasibility of touching the different airfields available for the trip.



Initially, the need to increase the autonomy of the Hercules to twenty hours was recognized, which has the capacity to fly thirteen hours without the need to refuel.

The technical group of the I Air Brigade assumed the task of modifying the fuel systems of the device and equipping it with two extra fuel tanks, which was achieved in an extremely short period of time and at such a low cost that it justified the interruption of a initial contact with the aircraft construction company.

This firm considered that the modifications would require 45 days of work and, in addition, they spent a very high budget to carry it out.



The flight tests of the new equipment - including changes to the aircraft's electronic installations - confirmed the capacity and ingenuity of the civil and military personnel of the I Air Brigade.
Precisely, in the course of one of the verification flights - having already verified the goodness of the fuel and navigation systems - a radial link was established with the Marambio base, during which the personnel stationed on this small Antarctic island reported that the The condition of the track was excellent and the temperature in the area was -2ºC, that is, a “spring” mark for that base.

The prevailing weather at our main air station in Antarctica introduced a variant in the flight calculations since it had been estimated that takeoff from Marambio would take place at about five degrees below zero. With low temperatures, the takeoff operation of a turboprop airplane is simplified. The air is denser and ensures that the engines reach their maximum power in a few seconds, shortening the necessary distance for the plane to achieve the lift necessary to take off.

Given the 1,200 m runway at the Marambio base, a relatively low temperature was required for a plane to achieve lift of 75 tons.

For this reason, it was agreed to use auxiliary rockets, called “JATOS”, which in number of eight represent an additional power equivalent to two more engines for a few seconds.

In any case, that radio conversation with Marambio expedited the events and then the time of departure was set for the night of Tuesday, December 4, 1973.

AT THE MARAMBIO BASE

On a flight without special alternatives, the Hercules arrived in Marambio at 02:51 on December 5.
Another Hercules was waiting on the runway, configured as a tanker plane that provided 17,000 liters of fuel in a minimum of time.

At that time, there was a total absence of wind on the island and the temperature reached 6ºC, unfavorable circumstances that made it necessary to use rockets to take off.

At 06:50 we were ready to head to the South Pole and face the most critical stage of the operation:
travel 1,200 m of the runway with the engines at maximum power and the rockets on to begin the great jump over the frozen continent. And the takeoff was done; Fourteen people aboard the Hercules breathed a sigh of relief when the plane jumped into the clouds to soar to 8,000 m, the optimal level for flight.

ON THE POLAR PLATEAU

The flight between Marambio and Canberra lasted 17:54 hours. A dense layer of clouds hid the Antarctic ice cap from the eyes of sailors. In the immensity of space, surrounded by the impressive silent calm of the heights, the plane maintained radial contact with Argentine territory. From El Palomar or Río Gallegos came voices from a familiar world; Behind each technical communication or meteorological report was hidden the word of encouragement from those who, although on the ground, made this 12,300 km flight that stretched between Australia and Argentina their own.

With favorable winds and an extreme temperature of -50ºC, the Hercules reached 80º South latitude, where the dense layer of clouds opened to offer the aeronauts the grandiose vision of the polar plateau extending its dazzling whiteness across the entire horizon. .

Near the South Pole, when the radar received the echo of the constructions of the Amundsen-Scott base, everyone on board felt like they were protagonists of a special moment: they were truly launched towards distant Australia; They participated in the opening of a new path whose political and economic perspectives are still unpredictable.

UNFAVORABLE WINDS

Shortly after flying over the South Pole, the intensity of the wind began to grow and already near McMurdo, the US base on the Ross Sea, gusts reached 155 km/h.

From that moment on, the wind began to be an obstacle to the plane's movement. Due to this, the Hercules made landfall in the capital of Australia almost two hours late, which involved dangerous fuel consumption.

For this last part of the trip, meteorological information was available from the World Meteorological Center in Melbourne, but it was not accurate enough. The actual high winds far exceeded the calculated winds.

After the passage of Hercules over Antarctica, we can affirm that in the future meteorological data will be of fundamental value to prevent commercial flights from suffering dangerous delays due to bow winds over the Drake Passage or over the Pacific.

On the circumpolar weather charts prepared daily by the National Meteorological Service, pilots must look for a “gap” between the cyclone trains that circumvent the Antarctic continent to have the help of tailwinds and reach their destination with an acceptable margin of security.

Furthermore, the insufficiency of weather data available in the Pacific Ocean west of Argentina, or in the Indian Ocean west of Australia, recommends the use of automatic buoys to close the meteorological network around the Sixth Continent.

THE RETURN

The Hercules took off on Saturday, December 8, from Canberra airport heading to Christchurch, in New Zealand, to depart from there on the 9th at 11:54 p.m. back to Argentina.

Flying in a straight line, the Hercules headed towards Marambio, leaving aside the route to the South Pole. Given the unfavorable weather conditions in the Marambio base area, the device continued its direct flight to Río Gallegos, where it made landfall that same day at 11:43 p.m., apparently eleven minutes before leaving New Zealand.

Paradoxical deception of astronomy and time zones... When the Hercules descended in Buenos Aires, nothing in its structure indicated that it had put an end to a daring voyage that united three continents through a dangerous route like few others: South America, Antarctica and
Australia.

The magnitude of the flight organized by the Air Force appears hidden by the normality that surrounded the operation; but currently flights through Antarctica have become part of everyday life, the regular news of this century in which men lost their capacity for wonder.

Although the world of Antarctic ice is still full of dangers, although the cold and wind create almost insurmountable walls to human activity, the Hercules C-130 opened a new stage in a world where the geography is increasingly smaller.

General Commander of the FAA Brigadier General Héctor Luis FAUTARIO
Aircraft Commander Vicecommodore José Apolo GONZÁLEZ
First Pilot Captain Juan Daniel PAULIK
Second Pilot Captain Héctor CID
First Navigator Captain Adrián José SPERANZA
Second Navigator Captain Hugo César MEISNER
Navigator/Survival Specialist First Lieutenant Jorge VALDECANTOS
Senior Meteorologist Salvado ALAIMO
First Chief Non-Commissioned Officer Pedro BESSERO
Second Deputy Assistant Mechanic Juan Bautista MEDERO
Air Delivery System Operator Senior Warrant Officer Jorge R. LINDER
Photographer Non-Commissioned Officer Major Juan BUENO

Also participated in this flight:

Commodore Julio C. PORCILE
Major Manuel M. MIR

Argentine Antarctica: The 1972 Tragedy

Tragedy in Antarctica: fall into a crevasse, a man waiting to be rescued and a missing body

In February 1972, a somber incident unfolded on the Antarctic continent as a Snocat transporting a patrol to the Sobral Base plunged into a deep crevice. The unfortunate event resulted in the loss of one occupant's life, while the other, teetering on the brink of freezing, placed their trust in Providence but was ultimately rescued. This narrative encapsulates the valor and commitment exhibited by those who dared to endure a year in the challenging conditions of the white continent.

By Adrián Pignatelli || Infobae

 

The patrol of ten men that left the Belgrano Base for Sobral, by then already deactivated (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana)

Inside the crevice, about sixty meters of icy depth, assistant mechanic sergeant Bladimiro Lezchik was conscious. He had an open fracture in his left shoulder and was bleeding from a deep wound in his scalp.

The vehicle he was driving, a Snocat, had fallen into a treacherous opening of ice that was hidden by the snow. His partner, Assistant Sergeant Oscar Kurzmann, 35, lay outside the destroyed vehicle. He was dead.

He remained for several hours in total darkness. While he asked for help, he thought about his family, his children. In a moment he resigned himself and entrusted himself to God.

When one of his companions came down with ropes to rescue him, he was freezing, he was at the limit of his strength and he was dominated by that dream from which it is impossible to wake up.

Bladimiro Lezchik was of Ukrainian descent. He was born in Formosa and his dream was to visit Antarctica (Photograph courtesy of the Lezchik family)

It was his first mission in Antarctica, where he had always dreamed of going, where he learned to know it through the stories of General Jorge Leal and when he set foot there he would be hooked forever. He said that it was like a magnet, a love, to which you always want to return.

Bladimiro (yes, with a long b, that's how they wrote it down) was a man from Formosa born in Colonia El Zapallito and he lived his childhood in El Colorado, a city in the southeast of the province, on the banks of the Bermejo River. His father had settled there, a Ukrainian who made his living as a tailor in his country, who traveled in carts making clothes and who in the harsh winter months when he couldn't go out, did theater.

Assistant Sergeant Oscar Kurzmann. He had Antarctic experience. Photograph published in the Non-Commissioned Officer Magazine No. 588, year 1984.

With a group of friends he came to Argentina and when he wanted to return, a civil war had broken out between Russia and Poland. He knew that if he returned he would be drafted and he stayed. The original family surname is an endless string of consonants, and the civil registry employee wrote it the way he heard it and that's how it stayed.

In Formosa there is an important colony of Ukrainians. The Lezchiks dedicated themselves to the countryside and Bladimiro, until he entered primary school, only spoke his native language. Upon completion, since there was no secondary school in the area, they sent him to train at the Sergeant Cabral Non-Commissioned Officers School.

The first one on the left. Lezchik with two companions, with a Snocat in the background (Photograph courtesy of the Lezchik family)

In 1961 he married Lidia Martyniuk, also of Ukrainian parents. He introduced them to a cousin at the end of 1957 when they returned to El Colorado on those endless train trips to Chaco and then by bus to the town of those who studied in Buenos Aires during the year.

When in 1970 they bought land and built a house in Rosario, they did so with a loan. Paying the fees was increasingly difficult, and the solution that Bladimiro saw was to offer to participate in a mission in Antarctica, for the significant extra that was charged.

Lezchik's dream was to go to the white continent, but he had not been lucky enough to be called up, despite the number of times he had signed up. Until he was selected.

On the way to Sobral, at kilometer 60, carrying fuel on the sleds (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana)

They were first sent south to acclimatize to the cold and snow. His wife Lidia, who had worked until she got married, was left alone with two children, Elbio, 9, and Noemí, 5, in a neighborhood where there was only one house on her block and the rest were vacant. Before Lezchik left, who had a knack for fixing anything, he added extra latches to the doors and windows.

On January 18, 1972, the 34 men, including military and civilians, arrived in Antarctica. For some it was their first trip and others already had experience.

The first task was titanic. Transfer the cargo brought by the San Martín Icebreaker about five kilometers uphill to the Belgrano Base.

Mortal trap. The crack where the Snocat "Chaco" fell, with the two men (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana)

On February 8, after lunch, he left on his first mission. He was part of a patrol of ten men, commanded by Carlos Fontana, a first lieutenant who had fallen in love with Antarctica after reading Cuatro Años en las Orcas del Sur, by José Manuel Moneta. He turned 30 years old on the white continent.

The patrol left the General Belgrano Base towards Alférez Sobral, an inactive scientific base, located 410 kilometers to the south. They had to update the route and supply it with food and fuel, because the future plan was to reactivate it. Deactivated in October 1968, the Sobral is currently buried in ice.

The trip had to be made as soon as possible, because the polar night was approaching. Fontana considered the order meaningless, because the snow and ice were soft and the dangers increased.

They were in four Snocats, the “Córdoba”, “Chaco”, “Venado Tuerto” and “Santiago del Estero”. Each of them dragged three sleds. Lezchik drove the “Chaco” and was accompanied by Assistant Sergeant Oscar Kurzmann, who had already joined the Esperanza Base crew in 1964.

The operation to rescue Lezchik and recover Kurzmann's body was put into practice immediately (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana).

On the maps that the group carried, the areas of cracks were marked, gathered in a stretch of about 60 kilometers. They were driving in second gear and probing the terrain to locate possible openings.

At 11:40 p.m., at kilometer 72, the “Santiago del Estero” sounded the alarm: the “Chaco” had disappeared into a crevasse.

Only a dark hole was visible, from which what Fontana describes as “sea smoke” emanated, with a strong acrid smell. When faced with shouting calls, only Lezchik responded. He asked to be taken out. Immediately, the rescue operation was prepared.

Lezchik, who had managed to get out of the Snocat, saw that his companion was on a balcony in the crevice, dead. He felt the blood running down his face and how his body grew cold. As time passed, he knew the inexorable fate.

On the surface, his companions had organized themselves against the clock. Sergeant Domínguez offered to go down, because he was the one who weighed the least. They crossed boards over the immense gap, tied him to several nylon ropes and lowered him, but when the rope reached its limit, they heard his screams that he could not reach the place. They had to add two more sections.

The Snocat was destroyed, about sixty meters deep. Domínguez confirmed that Kurzmann had died. Then he took care of Lezchik.

Kilometer 72. Before returning to the Belgrano Base, they left a cross in the place where Kurzmann's body was left. (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana)

He tied up this burly man of 1.92, who put his good arm around his neck. Laboriously, they climbed them.

Once on the surface, morphine was applied, his shoulder was immobilized and he received thirty stitches, without anesthesia, on his scalp. He was hypothermic and maneuvers were performed to stabilize him. They had to take him to the base because his life was in danger and they were running out of morphine.

While he was being assisted, Lieutenant Juan Carlos Videla and Leonardo Guzmán (with 14 winters in Antarctica under their belt) went down to rescue the body of their dead companion. They saw that his head was crushed. They covered her with the hood of their jacket.

When they were hoisting the body, the rope was cut and the body fell into the void. With a temperature of 20 degrees below zero, the men exhausted and one seriously injured, the chief, although at one point he thought about dividing the patrol, ordered to return to the base.

A wooden cross was improvised, milestones were placed to mark the place, and nine grieving men set out. They returned to the site on February 25, when weather permitted. They went in three Snocats and in one they carried a wooden coffin built by Assistant Sergeant Aragón and Sergeant Domínguez. To do so, they took the height of the head of the base as a measurement.

When they arrived at the place, they saw that the wooden cross was standing but that the crack had closed. They opened other holes and lowered a lantern that, due to the difference in temperature, exploded. They knew there was nothing they could do and they returned.

In November 1972, a fuel drum filled with ice with a metal cross, secured with steel cables, served as a monolith in tribute to the dead comrade.

For the patrol, it was a premonitory event. Days ago Kurzmann had confessed to Fontana that the day he died, he wanted to rest in Antarctica. He had already been at the Esperanza and Matienzo bases in other seasons and his vocation for being there was evident.

Lidia Lezchik found out about the accident because the police came to her house with a message from the Antarctic Directorate. Her challenge was then to talk to her husband on the phone.

Before leaving, Lezchik had asked, unsuccessfully, for a telephone line in a neighborhood that was conspicuous by its absence.

Communications between the continent and Antarctica were complicated to establish (Photograph courtesy of the Lezchik family)

His son Elbio remembers that there were two ways to talk to his father. One was to go to the command in Rosario, where a link was made with the Belgrano Base and the other was a phone call. Since the family did not have a telephone, they went to a neighbor's house, a few blocks away, or used the phone booth at the bus terminal. The procedure was always the same: there were pre-established days and times to do it, the call was requested and you had to wait. Sometimes an eternity.

As a result of solidarity, the members of the base had the services of the LU2AO radio amateur, who gave up an hour every Sunday so they could communicate with their families.

Only a week after the accident was the woman able to speak with her husband. They were not clean transmissions, there was a lot of noise that caused the voices to be distorted. “It's like when you try to talk underwater,” she explained. Additionally, they had to close a question or phrase with a “change.”

Doubts immediately arose in the woman. What if it wasn't her husband who was talking to her? If it was a colleague who pretended to be him because she was more serious than what they had told him? I always asked these questions on the way back home after each communication. It was winter and the wife and her two children slept together in the double bed to feel less alone.

In those talks, the same thing always happened: as soon as Elbio heard his father's voice, the emotion overcame him, he couldn't speak and he crossed to the opposite square to calm down.

Lezchik had to remain in Antarctica because the ice closed and the sea route was cut off. Operated by Dr. Bianco, he cured his shoulder there after four months of convalescence. His colleagues said that he was a strong and tough “Pole”. They also nicknamed him “Russian” and “German.”

The return was a rough sailing on the icebreaker to Ushuaia, where they boarded a Hercules. The whole family went to wait for him at El Palomar. His wife's mystery was which person he would meet. That night the expectation was eternal because he was the last to get off the machine. “Didn't you see Lezchik?” he asked each of those who got off. “Yes, yes…” was the answer. But nothing else.

It broke Lidia's heart to see María Teresa, Oscar Kurzmann's wife, alone, waiting for the bag with her unfortunate husband's belongings, including books by Arthur Schopenhauer written in German.

He was the last to appear. The family, relieved to see that she could move on her own, ran down the track to the foot of the stairs towards this big man who was unrecognizable because he had grown a beard. There were no words, but kisses and hugs. She was surprised to see her children taller than her.

Lezchik next to a Snocat, the vehicle used to travel in Antarctica (Photograph courtesy of the Lezchik family)

Endless hours of talks followed, where he recounted his experiences. They took a month's vacation and when they returned it was their turn to do their studies. He had a small bone in his shoulder raised a little higher.

He suffered from intense headaches and had to undergo psychological treatment for his recurring nightmares in which he dreamed that he fell into the crack.

He began to perform passive tasks in the Rosario military factory and in 1974 he was retired due to disability. They recommended that he dedicate himself to something that had nothing to do with his profession. That's how he became a taxi driver in Rosario. Vanesa's arrival had made him a father for the third time.

As his son remembers him, he was a silent, somewhat withdrawn person, with a very strong inner life.

He was also an evangelical pastor and with his wife they became the leaders of the “Sanctuary of Faith” temple, in Provincias Unidas in 2000, near the Rosario exit towards Funes, where nearly five thousand faithful attend. They had both been raised in that religion.

He was very detailed in everything he undertook and he himself fixed the car when it broke down. He liked to cook and had inherited organizational skills from the army. That habit made him a reference in the great campaigns of evangelism.

On Saturday, April 30, 2005, he was heading in his Peugeot 405 with other pastors to a meeting in the city of Buenos Aires. At kilometer 268 of the Rosario-Buenos Aires highway, near Arroyo Seco, there was a lot of fog and smoke, and they had to stop at the end of a long line led by a car that braked because it did not want to continue in those conditions. They were left behind a truck and another, loaded with soybeans, did not stop in time. Lezchik, at the wheel, died instantly along with another. A third, Norberto Carlini, saved his life.

He was 58 years old.

Carlos Fontana remained silent and after fifty years decided to tell what had happened that February 1972. On September 21 of last year, an event was organized, in which Kurzmann's nephews were given his file.

Monolith that marks the site of the tragic accident in which Oscar Kurzmann lost his life. (Photograph courtesy of Carlos Fontana)

Noemí Lezchik told Infobae that her father's eyes clouded with grief when he remembered his dead colleague, and it was a memory that accompanied him throughout his life. She says that he had two deaths, one when he had the accident, in which he was reborn when he was rescued and then on the highway where, far from the Antarctic ice that he was so passionate about, that son of Ukrainians who had learned Spanish at school and that everything he undertook in life he did with the same passion with which he lived.

Sources: Interviews with Lidia Martyniuk, Elbio Lezchik, Noemí Lezchik and Carlos Fontana.

Antarctica: Icebreaker "General San Martin" blocked by ice

Icebreaker "General San Martin" in Antarctica, blocked by a compact mass of ice. 1969/70 campaign
General Archive of the Nation Photographic Doc. Department. Buenos Aires. Argentina